It was too cold to take off my mittens and check Google Maps so I trusted the trick of the bundled up people in front of me. All of them were carrying signs and whistles around their necks over layers and layers of winter clothing. At first there were dozens of us walking across the street from Minneapolis City Hall, toward Government Plaza, and within a block it was hundreds. When I arrived it was thousands. Some reports said five to ten thousand, but on the ground, it felt like a flowing mass that was too big to count.
I repeated “excuse me” and “excuse me” despite the crowd, because the people here are unmistakably polite. Someone offered me the “Fuck the Snow” pin. Someone else offered me a chocolate chip cookie. Another offered me a red vozilla. All three declined to be named or interviewed.
Friday, January 30, was the second general strike in the Twin Cities since federal immigration officers killed Alex Pretty. It was reportedly organized by Somali and black student groups at the University of Minnesota. Unlike the first strike last week, and endorsed by local unions, this Friday was more quickly organized than the first economic blackout. I heard murmurs of a lower turnout this time, which made it hard to contend with the fact that the plaza was so crowded that I couldn’t understand how more people could fit. And yet Minnesotans keep coming. The light railcar pulled in and through the windows I saw the people inside standing shoulder to shoulder, and they threw out and somehow filled the space that wasn’t there.
They chanted: “No more Minnesota good, Minneapolis will strike.”
In contrast to the protests outside the Whipple Federal Building, the staging area from which ice agents drove in marked cars to hunt down immigrants, the mood at the City Hall rally was almost euphoric, despite the ubiquitous outrage and lack of terror. In Whipple, people boo and yell at federal agents and local sheriff’s deputies alike, and their taunts are often met with flash bangs and pepper spray. Today, there was no such threat at the City Hall rally, but if the people of Minneapolis have learned anything in the past few weeks, it’s that danger lurks around every corner. You could be sitting in your car and get hit by a federal agent. You can ice watch and get killed by a federal agent. You can protest He Murdered and arrested by federal agents. You could be walking or driving to work and be pulled over by a federal agent. You can blow a whistle to alert your neighbors that federal agents are pulling someone off the street, and you’ll end up, very rarely, being pepper-sprayed by a federal agent. The medics hunkered down about it, prepared for the worst.
Helicopters circle overhead. Volunteer marshals in neon vests, stationed at nearly every entrance and street corner, directed the crowd. One warned me about the snow. I didn’t hear him and slipped, but a woman behind me caught my fall.
